The
works of Nikolai Grizjuk show that he was an artist with a special "vision".
He expressed this vision to his contemporaries by opening up to them the
world of colour. We do not wish to say that before Gritzujk there was no
development in colour tradition in Russian art. It is enough to remember
Vasily Kandinsky's "World of Art", which argues that, even if the gray
skies of mid Russia's hilly regions may not have contributed to the process
of colour tone distinction, as the sunny skies of Italy did, Russian art
did produce, nevertheless, sound theories about painting, which have been
considerably influential in twentieth century art.

The
fact, that the art of social realism established a style in art where the
execution of a painting played second role to "subject matter" is quite
another issue. It was exactly this tradition of subordination which Grizjuk
opposed. In the sixties, when social realism was undergoing a change of
face by becoming more austere in style, with the aim of once more establishing
"another" ideological standpoint, Grizjuk did not abandon what he had started
in the area of figurative work and gradually created a "new pictorial vision".
What was essential about this vision was the change in approach to the
correlation of colour and form.

Traditionall
colour has served as a means to create from. Colour acts like material,
from which step by step a film of objects is modelled. Of course, during
this process the colour qualities of the pictorial surface start to play
an independent role. This qualities may be abstracted and made absolute,
as in abstract expressionism. However the shade or impression of a subject
and its form always remain gathered in a series of colour transitions,
even in those instances when the artist is attempting to reproduce the
pure correlation of colour only.

In
changing the direction in colour-form correlation, Grizjuk made an important
step with regard to the light, reflective qualities of colours. In Grizjuk's
work light begins to play a leading role. The paradoxical nature and strength
of this approach appears in what seem to be even the most traditional landscapes...

...The
significance behind the approach developed by Grizjuk, has come to be fully
appreciated today only in retrospect, and not because of the adoption of
certain formal criticism developed recently, nor even radical political
changes. Russian art criticism has now learnt to cut out ideological padding
when discussing real aethetic problems. Are not the classics od socialist
realism - Brodsky, Efanov, Svagoda, Gerasimov, Samokhvalova, and others
- currently being rehabilitated purely in terms of aesthetics? It is finally
been acknowledged that these artists, in developing an absolutely original
iconography, which conveyed with unprecedented succession the ideals of
a great epoch, created "post-history"art.

Naturally,
Grizjuk's work is pre-conditioned by ideology. In the subjects of his paintings
echoes of the world-outlook of the intelligentsia of the post-sixties can
be traced. But what made Grizjuk stand out from the galaxy of his sixties
contemporaries was that his work was not characterised by ideological,
but aesthitic consequences. It was from philosophies and values of artists,
just like Grizjuk, that independent Russian art grew: art which came to
maturity by the seventies. It was no accident that Grizjuk befriended I.
Kabakov, an artist in his circle. In Kabakov's archives a whole section
remains of pictures and exhibition catalogues, which Grizjuk gave to his
as gifts.

The
pure kingdom of light, which Grizjuk offers us and to which he draws our
attention, cleared up the battleground of space of post-war Soviet art,
where the edifices of modern art used to be created.

Although
Grizjuk did not leave behind a series of aesthetic tracts or commentaries,
which explane his creativity, he remains an artist "par excellence", to
the extent that his own works are testament of a fundamental artistic belief,
which in itself is so self-evident, that any attempt to articulate it presents
no problem. The artistic intellectualism of the seventies placed its own
interpretation on Grizjuk's artistic style, accepting it as the only aethetic
alternative in those years, that had its own particular position or point
of view. However it was precisely the availability of two alternatives
through which the Russian version of pop-art and conceptualism were made
possible: the official, ideological alternative and the independent alternative
of "pure art". The second wave of avant-garde created a web of its own
understanding and expectations between these two major trends, equally
inevitable, in as much as the first was rooted in the political culture
of this period, and the second - in the history of classical European art.
It seemed exactly as if the role played by light in the history of art
had found the peak of expression in Grizjuk's landscapes and compositions
of the Soviet sixties.

Grizjuk's
work is a good example of an obvious truth - that the energy of talent
and the power of conviction produce notable results in any epoch, even
in cruel one. Of course, totalitarian societies are bound to create totalitarian
art. However, strong personalities, even in such "force majeure" circumstances,
are capable of creating their own enclaves of freedom.